With the rapid deployment of data acquisition technology throughout the oil and gas industries, it is becoming common for oil and gas facilities to be well equipped with plant distributed control systems, data historian (e.g., PI system), and performance monitoring tools.
Plant performance monitoring takes many forms in the industry. Commercial products exist that allow general monitoring capabilities, for example, focused on controller performance. Another set of tools focus on, or are tailored toward, energy optimization efforts only. However, there is a lack of monitoring tools that allow for monitoring a more extensive variety of information, such as equipment efficiency, yield, utilities, and process, as well as resource optimization, to allow for the optimization of factors relevant to the operations of a facility. Additionally, there is a lack of monitoring tools that are designed for a GOSP facility.
Currently, GOSP facilities rely on typical process monitoring tools, like data historian PI systems, and manual calculations, to monitor performance. There exists a system that incorporates KPIs and is mainly used to compare between actual performance and the KPI performance. However, this system is mainly limited to simple performance parameters, such as temperature and flow rate monitoring. If a detailed performance parameter monitoring is required, such as to monitor compressor polytrophic efficiency, such an analysis is time consuming and takes several hours to complete. This time consuming effort is not productive unless the effort is automated and integrated. Thus, there is a need in the industry for improved monitoring tools.